Elections
in Myanmar are weeks away. They won’t be held until Nov. 8. But more than a
hundred of the country’s democracy activists have already voted. They voted
with their feet by walking away from democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
They say she has become hopelessly authoritarian.
The
rumblings stirred as early as mid-2012, soon after the April by-elections that
her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won by a landslide. At
first the grousing was aimed at the party leaders around her. But as the months
passed, blunt accusations began roosting directly at her doorstep.
Now the
flaks come not only from party old-timers but also from intellectuals and media
commentators. One writer describes her approach to leadership as “my way or the
highway.”
Aung San Suu
Kyi the universally revered democracy icon an authoritarian? That’s the mother
of all ironies.
But that’s
what many veteran NLD cadres are saying. For instance, they say, in the
selection of candidates for the general election this November, she summarily
passed over most of Generation 88, a group of democracy activists who had
served time in detention. She ignored the proposed candidates of many local
chapters. This prompted scores of resignation from the party. Those who
vehemently protested were expelled.
In the
states dominated by ethnic minority groups, she has snubbed suggestions by
local NLD chapters to strike up what should have been a natural alliance with
the ethnic minority parties. Instead she has treated them as political
opponents. Of course these ethnic minority groups are livid. And civil society
organizations, already critical of her failure to denounce recent military
brutality, are aggravated.
Worrisome to
many party cadres is her failure — or refusal — to groom possible successors.
At 70 she’s no spring chicken. She may be a lioness, but in winter. Close
associates describe her as “overworked and struggling to delegate power.” But
she has turns away rising political stars, like Ko Ko Gyi of Generation 88, who
has offered to join the party. Obviously she wants no rivals for the party
crown.
Yet she has
forged an alliance with a controversial figure in the military establishment,
Shwe Mann, speaker of the lower house of parliament. There’s talk of a secret
deal between her and the former general: that she would help him become
president now and, in turn, he would clear the constitutional barriers that
stand in the way of her becoming president after him.
That
scenario was blasted recently when President Thein Sein, on instigation by the
military, ousted Shwe Mann from the leadership of the ruling Union Solidarity
and Development Party. Thus he has been marginalized and politically neutered.
It has not
helped her reputation among democracy activists that she remains silent on the
genocide being perpetrated by the Rohingya people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Talks of a
post-Suu Kyi era in Myanmar, however, are premature. Her party will probably
win the November elections although no longer by a landslide. Her quest for
reform of the country’s parody of a constitution remains valid and strong.
Yet that
goal eludes her. And she has too many self-inflicted political wounds. Already
she is a tragic figure.
The greatest
human tragedy isn’t when we’re crushed by opponents or by circumstance. It’s
when we become the dragon we sought to slay. When we become the thing we hate.
That’s what
happened to The Lady. An icon for democracy, she has become, in the eyes of
followers and admirers, authoritarian.
No, she
won’t carry out brutal repression, as the generals did. But by her imperious
disregard of the good counsel of many of her followers, in their eyes, she has
come to resemble the military tormentors she resisted for decades.
Jamil Maidan
Flores is a Jakarta-based literary writer whose interests include philosophy
and foreign policy
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